Rethinking the Public Presentation of Islamic Art: New Installations
and Reinstallations of Museum Collections in the 21st Century
brought curators from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County
Museum of Art and The Jameel Gallery, Victoria and Albert, London to
discuss the relationship between current Western perceptions of Islam
and the role of museums in mediating that perception. Since September
2001, several major museums in the US and UK have shut down their
Islamic galleries for renovations. Whereas in other areas, exhibition
design had long evolved from a decorative arrangement of objects to
propounding a conceptual vision, Islamic art remained on the outside of
such a discursive framework. Because of the events of the last five
years, Islam has become a buzz word in public consciousness and among
other places, museums too, are littered with visitors actively seeking
out Islamic collections. In resopnse to this new public interest,
museums have succumbed to the need of reinstalling their Islamic
collections, in what they consider more informative and interactive
ways.

Curatorial outlook contrasts that of the arthistorian in
many ways. For instance, Aimée Froom, spoke about the decision to
include in the new space at the Brooklyn Museum, a recreational area
called the Paradise Garden. This garden is to be designed like the chahar-bagh
- qaudripartite garden - often seen in Safavid, Ottoman and Mughal
miniatures. In the paintings, the garden plot is divided into four by
a central square fountain and water chutes emerging from the midpoint
of each its sides. The problem is that the rendition of the chahar-bagh
as a vision of the Islamic Paradise was but one interpretation by
scholars of the early twentieth century to whom the culture of the land
was necessarily derived from its religion. So to make sense of an
unfamiliar visual vocabulary they looked to the Qur'an as their source
and projected its descriptions of paradise on to the chahar-bagh:
so the four chutes of water evoked the "rivers of milk and honey", and
the fact that the gardens were in the Emperor's private quarters and
hence frequented by the women of household readily lent itself to the
mention of houris. In the realm of the arthistorian this
interpretation has been contested extensively and is acknowledged as
just one of the several possible reasons for the particular garden
design, in fact the harshest critiques have deemed the approach
essentialist, at best. To the curator, the creation of a chahar-bagh
space will make that element of an Islamic milieu relatable to the
western audience. To the art historian, the simulation of a chahar-bagh
is not as problematic as is calling that space a Paradise garden; the
positivist label eliminates the discursive potential for the viewer. The result of a well-intended concerted effort to familiarize the
western audience with a foreign culture ends up misinforming the viewer
some more.

Curators think in demographics.Timothy Stanley, of
the Jameel Gallery at the Victoria and Albert, found that the
collection he is in charge of, is from an Islamic region different from
where his transnational muslim audience traces its ethnic roots.
According to Stanley, these Islamic objects can not be marketed to the
contemporary Southasian populace of the Sheffield area as their
heritage. In the curatorial mindset, the breadth of Islamic culture is
defined by the extent of the collection at hand. In the case of the V
& A collection, the glory of Islamic culture is thus frozen in the
years between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, bound to the
Meditteranean and hence offers nothing to the twenty-first century
Southasian visitor. As an arthistorian, it is easy to see that
Stanley's anticipated visitor response is constrained by modernist
delineations of geo-political boundaries. Identification trends among
Southasians in Britain are blantantly manifested in their expressed,
vociferous support of the oppressed Muslim world -- clearly, there is a
religiously defined identity which underscores national identity. To
limit cultural pride in cartographic segments is to overlook the
multifaceted nature of an audience's sense of self.

Lastly,
Linda Komaroff from LACMA, recounted the dilemma of the western curator
in presenting the collection in an objective light in the professional
domain and being embittered by the civilization in the personal
sphere. Whereas the curator's narcissistic claim to unbiased
scientific credence is never admitted, the postmodern arthistorian
clarifies authorial inclination in the initial thesis statement.
Subjectivity pervades every dimension of scholarship: unlike popular
opinion it does not come from eccentricity but rather from personal
politics.

Moral of the session: arthistorians have no bearing
on the applications of arthistory in the real world - that is
curatorial territory. For the unsuspecting visitor, the museum is
anything but a safe space.

Rethinking the Public Presentation of Islamic Art: New Installations
and Reinstallations of Museum Collections in the 21st Century
brought curators from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County
Museum of Art and The Jameel Gallery, Victoria and Albert, London to
discuss the relationship between current Western perceptions of Islam
and the role of museums in mediating that perception. Since September
2001, several major museums in the US and UK have shut down their
Islamic galleries for renovations. Whereas in other areas, exhibition
design had long evolved from a decorative arrangement of objects to
propounding a conceptual vision, Islamic art remained on the outside of
such a discursive framework. Because of the events of the last five
years, Islam has become a buzz word in public consciousness and among
other places, museums too, are littered with visitors actively seeking
out Islamic collections. In resopnse to this new public interest,
museums have succumbed to the need of reinstalling their Islamic
collections, in what they consider more informative and interactive
ways.

Curatorial outlook contrasts that of the arthistorian in
many ways. For instance, Aimée Froom, spoke about the decision to
include in the new space at the Brooklyn Museum, a recreational area
called the Paradise Garden. This garden is to be designed like the chahar-bagh
- qaudripartite garden - often seen in Safavid, Ottoman and Mughal
miniatures. In the paintings, the garden plot is divided into four by
a central square fountain and water chutes emerging from the midpoint
of each its sides. The problem is that the rendition of the chahar-bagh
as a vision of the Islamic Paradise was but one interpretation by
scholars of the early twentieth century to whom the culture of the land
was necessarily derived from its religion. So to make sense of an
unfamiliar visual vocabulary they looked to the Qur'an as their source
and projected its descriptions of paradise on to the chahar-bagh:
so the four chutes of water evoked the "rivers of milk and honey", and
the fact that the gardens were in the Emperor's private quarters and
hence frequented by the women of household readily lent itself to the
mention of houris. In the realm of the arthistorian this
interpretation has been contested extensively and is acknowledged as
just one of the several possible reasons for the particular garden
design, in fact the harshest critiques have deemed the approach
essentialist, at best. To the curator, the creation of a chahar-bagh
space will make that element of an Islamic milieu relatable to the
western audience. To the art historian, the simulation of a chahar-bagh
is not as problematic as is calling that space a Paradise garden; the
positivist label eliminates the discursive potential for the viewer. The result of a well-intended concerted effort to familiarize the
western audience with a foreign culture ends up misinforming the viewer
some more.

Curators think in demographics.Timothy Stanley, of
the Jameel Gallery at the Victoria and Albert, found that the
collection he is in charge of, is from an Islamic region different from
where his transnational muslim audience traces its ethnic roots.
According to Stanley, these Islamic objects can not be marketed to the
contemporary Southasian populace of the Sheffield area as their
heritage. In the curatorial mindset, the breadth of Islamic culture is
defined by the extent of the collection at hand. In the case of the V
& A collection, the glory of Islamic culture is thus frozen in the
years between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, bound to the
Meditteranean and hence offers nothing to the twenty-first century
Southasian visitor. As an arthistorian, it is easy to see that
Stanley's anticipated visitor response is constrained by modernist
delineations of geo-political boundaries. Identification trends among
Southasians in Britain are blantantly manifested in their expressed,
vociferous support of the oppressed Muslim world -- clearly, there is a
religiously defined identity which underscores national identity. To
limit cultural pride in cartographic segments is to overlook the
multifaceted nature of an audience's sense of self.

Lastly,
Linda Komaroff from LACMA, recounted the dilemma of the western curator
in presenting the collection in an objective light in the professional
domain and being embittered by the civilization in the personal
sphere. Whereas the curator's narcissistic claim to unbiased
scientific credence is never admitted, the postmodern arthistorian
clarifies authorial inclination in the initial thesis statement.
Subjectivity pervades every dimension of scholarship: unlike popular
opinion it does not come from eccentricity but rather from personal
politics.

Moral of the session: arthistorians have no bearing
on the applications of arthistory in the real world - that is
curatorial territory. For the unsuspecting visitor, the museum is
anything but a safe space.